Thank you for reading and sticking with this story.
He went to his wine cabinet after dropping Will at that isolated cabin he called a home. He selected a red, room temperature and perfectly matured. He sunk into the couch in his private parlour and began his routine; swirled the wine around the glass and took in the notes of oak, his nose perched over the rim of the glass , allowing his incredible olfactory talent to carry him away. Then the moment he savoured and like any great pleasure in life - carnal, physical, emotional – it lasted for a moment as he let the first sip roll over his lips, linger on his tongue. Morticia had been a moment of carnal pleasure. The smell of her skin had been the same when he had breathed her in, though there were notes of motherhood and the smell of another man on her. It had repulsed and angered him. Neither emotions sat well within Hannibal and he was angered by the fact that the passage of time had made a fool of him. He still desired her and now it was stronger. Nothing would be wasted. He would honour her like he had never honoured anyone before. His mind was made up.
His thoughts fled to Bedelia and for a moment his hand lingered over the phone at his side. Carnal pleasure. But no he would rather not. For one he did not want to wake her and two, no matter how beautiful, his desires could not be sated right now.
He stood up and went towards the stylish, antique Roladex on the immaculate kitchen counter. He produced a slither of paper from his pocked, and checking the details once again, he slipped it in under the letter 'A'.
he devoted the next few weeks to learning her routine. Or lack thereof. She rarely left the house and when she did she was always with him. She dined with him, she visited the opera with him and on some lunch times, paid a visit to his office. When she was not with him she took the female child on the dress maker errands, or on trips to an unremarkable purveyor of torture instruments in a back alley. One night, when curiosity won over the sensibility with which he was usually paired, he stood for a while on the edge of the graveyard that circled the house. He was impressed by the vast land and perplexed by the apparent security that the millionaire's estate seemed to lack. It was a marker of arrogance in Mr Addams, one that Hannibal planned to flout. He loathed arrogance almost as much as he loathed bad manners.
He followed them to the opera one night and watched them become entangled in the second act of La Boheme, with the intensity of a voyeur, the dedication of a psychologist and the jealousy of a former lover. She writhed in genuine delight, head and ebony hair tossed back, red lips parted in ecstasy and bitten intermittently for fear of interrupting the aria as her husband on bended knee between her legs, did exactly what Hannibal needed to do. Exquisite taste. Had he done that to her, all those years ago in Paris? Had he solicited that response? He could not remember such abandon. He had appreciated her control, her ability to give over only what she wanted him to have. Yet now, in the dim light of a glorious theatre, she was handing everything over to her husband on a plate. Unreserved, unabashed, as pleasure washed over her and a blush flushed her cheeks. He flared with rage and for the first time in many years, lost his temper swiftly. They found the body of a front of house contract worker, hanged by a staging rope, the following morning.
He knew she would read about it in her freshly ironed paper and know it was him. Subconsciously, he would have opened that facet of her memory she had closed in Paris.